There is no doubt that MTN Uganda is the largest telecom company in the country and according to a Daily Monitor report, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) said it’s investigating to ascertain why MTN Uganda has on the regular failed to optimally address customers’ complaints. This is especially concerning the company’s mobile money service.
MTN Uganda currently enjoys the lion’s share of the entire Mobile Money market. Being so large a company, the diseconomies of scale are starting to take their toll on some of their services.
In recent years, subscribers have become increasingly demanding in terms of the service that they expect from telecom companies. As a result, the government has put up bodies that can force telecoms to act in customers’ best interest. These regulators and ombudsmen sometimes help solve customer issues. Other times, they investigate and even slap fines to companies that are continuously guilty of customer service failings.
The warning!
“MTN has previously been warned about the same but the complaints continue to recur without being addressed.”, said Mr. Godfrey Mutabazi, the Executive director UCC. “The complaints are too many and we want to know what is happening. As a regulator we have set up a committee to look into these matters then come up with a report.”, he added.
The said committee will be made up of auditors from the commission. They have been tasked to find the reason behind the delays within a week. They will seek to uncover why the complaints about MTN Mobile money service have not been addressed sufficiently.
#MTNUgandaMweddeko hashtag.
The investigation comes at a time when complaints about MTN Uganda have sky rocketed under the #MTNUgandaMweddeko hashtag on the about to be taxed social media platforms. The hashtag was created by Dr. Busingye Kabumba, a Lawayer and Lecturer at Makerere University. This was after he was asked for a court order for MTN Uganda to retrieve money he had sent to a wrong receipient.
“Unfortunately the reversal cannot be done without authentication from the wrong receiver. We respect all customers and their privacy thus we always seek authentication to make reversals in case they receive money accidentally.”, replied MTN Uganda in a Twitter Message to Dr. Busingye.
We’ve all been here
Many telecom subscribers have had a bad experience with their provider, but only a few make their complaints known through the right channels. When we are dissatisfied with telecom service, the vast majority of us lament our nearest and dearest. In other cases, we inform hundreds of our Facebook friends or thousands of our Twitter followers through posts and tweets.
This is all spreading terrible word-of-mouth about the telecom company in question, but sadly sometimes we don’t get a satisfactory resolution to our problem. MTN previously rolled out new mobile money rates and the company now rewards customers in a giveaway campaign dubbed MoMo Nyabo. All these efforts are to steer the company to further success. But with little effort put to deal with the complaints about the service, the campaigns will hardly derive the required results. Great customer care is important because it increases customer loyalty, reduces customer attrition, aids positive word of mouth among others.
